CHAPTER VII - Increasing Difficulties

CllAPTER VII. INCREASING DIFf'ICULTIES.-RETREAT OF MALE SHERllES.-SECRET LETTERs.-nISMISSAL OF TURGOT.-HIS RETREAT.-HIS DEATH. W HAT impression did the king receive from that dn.y? It is difficult to know. Turgot, had he wearied him by requiring of him that new and so c()n~ siderable effort? It is certain, at any rate, that the influences of all Turgofs adversaries made themselves felt from that time with an increasing strength which soon became irresistible. The queen had succeeded in getting compJetdy the upper hand over the king, and she soon gave a last proof of that fact ajropos of the same Count de Guines on whose behalf she had already induced the king to in,· terfere, despite the unanimous opinion of the council The end was drawing near. At the time when the American affairs were begin ft ning to preoccupy them, ~f. de Vergennes and Turgot ha~ strongly urged the king to grant them authority to recall Count de Guines from London. They con sidered him rightly as unqualified to deal with delirote affairs. The king had yielded to their reasons, and Turgot.

had even written to Count de Vergennes, informing him that he gave him all power to change the ambas sador. The queen, extremely irritated by this resolution, had ascribed to Turgot, still more than to Vergennes, the disgrace of her favourite. She could not indeed cause the Count de Guines to be reinstated into the embassy which had jnst been taken awayfrom him, but she obtained for him the title of Duke, together with a con gratulatory letter written by the king himself. "I render justice to your conduct," wrote Louis XVI to him, "and I grant to you the honours of the Louvre, together with the permission of assuming the title of Duke. You are at liberty to show this letter." Count de ~iercy writes to :Maria Theresa: "In the matter of Count de Guines, the king finds that he has evidently been contradicting him self by autograph letters written to Count de Vergennes and Count de Guines·-lettcrs entirely opposed to each other; he further compromises himself and all his ministers in the eyes of the public, who know perfectly well that this is brought about by the will of the queen, and through a kind of violence exercised by her over the king. The cOIl/roltu,. ghleral, i~formed of the hatred which the queen bears towards him, has decided on retiring, chiefly on that account; the queen's plan was to insist upon the king's dismissing Turgot, and even sending him to the Bastille on the very day when Co~nt de Guines should be declared duke, and only the strongest and most urgent remonstrances could stop the consequences of the queen's anger; that anger has no COUllt de Gttilles.

othcr moth'c than the steps which Turgot felt bound to take for the recall of Count de Guines." Since the bed of justice, Turgot's enemies were jubilant j they knew that the king was tired, and e,"eryone felt cerbin of the downfall of the ~onlrolttlr general. The mot which Trudaine had uttered the day before the decrees had been sent to the parliament was becoming a reality. II Be sure," he had written to Turgot, U that there is not one councillor in the parliament who does not consider the fon"arding of the decrees as the end of your ministry. If this misfortune should happen, I believe that the king's authority would be ruined for the whole of his reign." The Choiseul party no longer concealed their jO)·. " TIlt Turgot is in a state of dissolution," said ~fadame du Deffant in a letter to the Duchess de Choiseul; and when she heard the news about " lite Turgot," she wrote: "'''hat events, what surprises, and, I may add, what jo}', nnd what pleasure; the triumph of ~1. de Guines is, I own, what has pleased me most." The Duchess de Choiseul answered: U I have, like you, been overwhelmed with joy at the triumph of :M. de Guignes; I think that the disgrace of the two ministers, which has accompanied it, makes him look like the Roman generals enjoying the honours of triumph, and dragging their slaves in their train." On the 1St of June, 1776, Galiani wrote to ~Iadame d'Epinay: "By the arrivalof the ambassador's brother·in-Iaw, I had learnt the change of the ministry, and I had learnt nothing more than what I knew when 166 Turgot.

?\1. Turgot was appointed ((111/rollttr gtnel"al. Pray read over again the letter I wrote to you then." The prophecy contained in the letter alluded to by him had really been a most singular one, and reflected the greatest credit on his perspicacity. IIere is the passage to which he refers, and it can be read in the letter he addressed from Naples to :Madame d'Epinay, September 17, 1774: "At last 1\:1. Turgot is (on/rolttt,. ghtt.~ral. lIe will remain in office for too short a time to be able to carry out his systems; the administration of the finances will be too like his brother's Cayenne. lIe will punish a few rogues, he will be out of temper, he will get angrr; he will wish to do good, but will meet everywhere with thorns, difficulties, rogues. Credit will diminish, he will be detested, people will say that he is not fit for the work; enthusiasm will cool down, he wilt retire or be dismissed, and once more people will dis~ cover the error of having appointed to an office like his, in a monarchy like yours, a man who is both virtuous and a staunch philosopher." Subaltern intrigues are mentioned, those, amongst others, of the ?\farquis de Pezay, who had contrived to attract the notice of the king, and had given him notes on the budget of receipts and expenditure, such as Turgot had prepared it. It is said that these, notes had been drawn up for 1\1. de Pezay by Necker himself, and that they stated matters with a great deal of cleverness in a way most unfavourable to the (on/ro/tllf'.. genlral. To use the Abbe Galiani's ex..

pression, some persons said that "he was not good for Turgo/ wrttes to tlte Kitlg. 167 the work." There was also an episode of forged letters intercepted by the (( Black Cabinet." Dupont de Nemours relates it in detail. An these secondary manoouvres may have had some effect in embittering the mind of the king; but the oppositionof the queen) the resignationof ~lalesherbesJ which occurred then, and the singularly severe and somewhat haughty letters which Turgot wrote to the king with the view of thwarting the influence of ~laurepasJ And asking that ~-lale5herbes should be replaced by a friend of reforms-·aU these circunlstances sufficiently explain the final crisis. In an absolute monarchy, such as was that of Louis XVI, as well as under a parliamentary government, like niodern ones, ministerial crises are always produced by questions of confidence. Turgot had lost the confidence of the king, and no ministerialcombination could restore it to him. The question was no longer to admit this or that person in the combination so as to have his support in the struggle with the prl'vileged classes. The king had made up his mind, and that was aU. Just as a parliamentary minister can do nothing to maintain his position when the majority have resolved upon with~ drawing their confidencefrom him, so Turgot could do nothing because the king would have him no more; better if he had sent in his resignation at the same time ~ ~{alesherbes. Instead of retiring,Turgot, with whom the king had (or some time avoided to hold any conver~ sation, wrote to Louis XVI foursecret letters in the shape J68 Tttrgot.

of memoirs, and two of them have, fortunately, reached us. The Ahb~ Soulavie had mentioned them in his diffuse and confused history; he had affirmed that in one Turgot had said to the king "a terrible, a frightful truth; he had pointed out to that young king, naturally full of fears and of timidity, that the destiny of feeble princes is that of Charles I or Charles IX." If we may believe Soulavie, he saw these 'letters amongst the papers of Louis XVI; the one where Charles I is mentioned had been placed by the king in an envelope, sealed with the smallest royal seal, of the size of a len/tine, with this inscription in his own handwriting: U Letters of Turgot." Soulavie's assertion had never been considered very serious by the historians of Turgot, when 1\-1. de Larcy discovered in 1868 the entire original of it in Very's memoirs. The document is so curious, and it throws so much light upon the last days of Turgot's ministry, that we shall give further on a certain number of passages from it. A still more recent discovery has, besides, removed all the doubts which might have been enter tained as to the existence of the letters in question, and the authenticity of that which ~I. de Larcy has published.

M. Ie :Marquis Turgot has found in the Lantheuil archives a sheet of paper serving originally as wrapper to a bundle of papers of which not one remains; but on that wrapper ~Ialesherbes had written with his own hand the following observations: "This bundle contains four letters written by ~{. Turgot to the king at the time when the selection of my successor was being considered.

~1. Turgot wrote to the king with the zeal whkh should actuate the minister the most devoted to the service of the crown, and with the confidence one has in one's trustiest friend. U He tells him in the dearest manner what he thought of those who were at the head of t.he administration, and of the persons best qualified to fill the vacant office; and even when he mentions his friends, he does not think he should conceal from the king the defects he knows they have. I' The most austere virtue pervades these fOUf letters; hut, on the one hand, and in the interest of those of whom he speaks, it would be extremely anno}'ing if any· one knew what he told the king in this (~onfidential statement j and nothing is certainly more contrary to l\I. Turgot's intentions than to le~l\re, in writing, notes of what he thought right to say to the king alone. "I, who speak of this, have no personal interest in the matter, for he praises me uoreservedl)"; not but that he certainly knew that I had defects, for I have many; but, as I was about to resign, the interest of the king's service did not require that they should be re"'ealed to him, and they have not been so. But there are certain persons named on. whose behalf I claim the most absolute silence, althouKh they have not commissioned me to do so, beCa\lSe they do not know what is said of them; and those for whom I do most interfere have an equal interest in demanding of the family the suppression of these documents. Indeed, ~1. Turgot can feel no M T1lrgot.

regret at such a suppression, because they are not memoirs in which ~1. Turgot explains to the king his principles as an administrator, memoirs which would be most worthy of being preserved. He has only said there on the necessity of maintaining authority what everyone has ,\Iread}~ said, and on the application of these principles, which is the subject of his long memoir, he only described the character of persons, which does n~t deserve preservation. U I trust that the letters themselves, written to the king, shall be buried in the deepest oblivion. If the contrary should happen, it will be the fault neither of M. 'furgot nor of his family; but they should not have to reproach themselves for contributing to this by the preservation of the rough drafts. I even exhort M~. Ie l\larquis Turgot to give up the idea of reading them himself; I repeat to him that he makes no sacrifice by doing so; I, who read them seven or eight days after they had been entrusted to me, I wish now I had never read them; so much do I fear lest, if the secrets of the n1inister to the king should be one day revealed, the accusation of that revelation should faU upon me. I add, that this secret being that of the king as much as that of the ministry, it is a mark of respect due to the king to burn the letters, if possible in the presence of some one qualified to certify the fact to him."

The documents contained in that wrapper were evidently the rough drafts of the letters seen by Soulavie in 1793, and are now lost. The drafts enTttrgols Letters. closed in the bundle, of which the wrapper alone has been preserved in the Lrmthtuil archives) \yere no doubt burned, as 1\faJeshtrbes wished. The copy of one of the four letters was probably sent to Very by Turgot himself, who wanted to sho\V to him in what terms he had insisted on his being sele<;ted in the place of 1\lalesherbes, and on his being named minister of the royal household. Another letter has been copied by Soulavie, and inserted by him in his Mbnoirts Izisloritjll($ as an annexed document amongst the pieces juslijiralh.'u. It refers to the petition of a certain Chanvallon, who, suing for the revision of a lawsuit, was endeavouring to com promise the president (Turgot's brother) and Turgot himself. It was a machination of Sartine, and Turgot denounced it to the king.

" Last year, ~1. de Sartine informed me of all the steps taken; asked, so to say, my consent, which I took c.are not to refuse; insisted, in spit: of myself, on my hearing the special report which ~L Chardon made to him, at hiS own house, of the whole affair; and now, eveI},thing is mysteriously conducted and is made public only in opposition to ~I. de Sartine. It is no longer I who am warned beforehand. And yet everyone knows that I am not capable of asking a denial or justice against any~ body; but it is :M. de Choiseul who gets the information before his departure for Chanteloup. \Vhence this difference? It is easily explnined: last year, the accession of 1\1. de l'falesherbes to the ministry, the kindnesses with !of 2 11t1:::01. which your :\fajesty honoured me, left no hope to those who wished for my downfall; they wanted either to win me over, or, at least, to seem as if the)' desired my friend ship. This year, the resignation of ~-f. de :Malesherbes, the combination, more decided, of all parties against me, my complete isolation, the tolerably well-known dislike of :M. de I\firomenil, and his influence over :M. de ~laurepas, everything persuades me that 1 am holding on merely by a thread. That thread must be broken, and then we must contrive secretly a fresh plot which shall bring back on the stage an old and wen-forgotten affair, hence the publication of defamatory memoirs, first in a ~lS. form, then printed; so is my time wasted in defending either my brother or myself, and this announces, at any rate, that I have lost my credit: that is, Sire, why the conduct of I\L de Sartine in 1776 is so different {rom what it was in 1775."

The other letter, the one of which the Abbe de Very had the copy, bears likewise the date April 30, J 776. Its character is so singular, it throws so much new light on Turgot's personal relations with the king, that it deserves serious meditation. U Sire, I will not conceal from your ~'1ajesty the deep pain I felt at heart in consequence of your cruel silence towards me, last Sunday, after -what I had told you with so full a detail in my previous letters about my position, about your own, about the danger which threatens both your authority and the glory of your reign, about the im· possibility of my serving you unless you come to my Tuygot's Leffel's. 173 assistance. Your l\lajesty hns not condescendt~d to give me an answer. . . . I have set at defiance the hatred of an those to whom some abuses are profitable. So long as I entertained the hope that your ~Iajesty valued me, so long as I hoped to do good, nothing has been spared on my part. Your ?\lajesty sees the impossibility in which I am to resist those who injure me, both by the evil they inflict upon me, and by the good they prevent me from doing, thwarting, as the)' do, all my operations, and your ?\Iajesty, nevertheless, gives me neither assist ance nor consolation.

"Your ~Iajesty said to me that you wanted Inore time for retlexion, and that you lacked experience. You do lack experience, Sire. I am aware that at the age of two.. and-twenty, and in ),our position, you have not the resources which the habit of living with one's equals gives to private individuals when they wish to judg(~ men. But will your experience be greater in a week? in a month? And must you wait till that slow experience has arrived, in order to adopt a resolution? "I have described to you all the evils caused by the weakness of the latc king, I have unfolded before you the progress of the intrigues which had, by degrees, made his authority contemptible. I venture to entreat you to read that letter over again; then ask yourself whether you wish to run the ri~k of the same dangers, I shall even say greaterdangersstill. "At the age of forty Louis XV enjoyed the whole amount of his authority. The public mind was not 174 Turgot.

excited then ,; no corporation hnd as yet tried its strength. You are twenty~two, Sire, and the parliaments are already more animated, more audadQus, more united to court~ cabals, than they were in 1770, after twenty years of enterprises and of success. ~Iinds are a thousand times more animated on all sorts of questions, and your cabinet is almost as divided and weaker than that of your predecessor, Think, Sire, that, according to the course of nature, you have fifty more years to reign, and think of the progress ,,,,,hieha disaffection C'ln make after having reached in twenty years the state we see. Oh ! Sire, do not wait till such experience has been your lot, and know how to profit by that of others. "Sire, I owe to ~I. de ~{aurepas the situation which your s"Injestyhas entrusted to me; this I shall never {orget; never shall I fail in whn.t I am bound to testify of him; but I am a thousand times under ~re~lter obligations to the State and to )'our l\fajesty. I could not, without being guiltyof a crime, sacrificethe interests of either. It costs me horribly to tell you that ~r. de ,Maurepas is really guilty if he proposes to you 1\1.

Amelot (to replace ~lalesherbes)J or, at any rate, that his ,..eakness would be as fatal to you as a premedit:lted crime .•.. (( At any rate, it is so evident to me that I cannot re main alone and isolated, as lam now, that even if my duty did not oblige me to tell you the whole tnlth, I could not have any interest in concealing it from you. If I displease you by so doing, I beg of your ~tajesty to ten l1t1:f°t'sLeliers. liS me so, or to fa\'our me with a It.~tter to that (~fr~ct. I do not wish to sh~lke your eonfiden<:e in ~l. de ~laurepas: hc;~ deserves it in many ways by his cxpet'ienc(~, his knowl(;~dg(~, his great acquaintance with buslnes<), his wonderful memory, his amiability, his sincere attachment to what is gOQd n.nd to your own pen30n. H But, Sire, you must surely he aware how weak-· minded ~1. de 'Maurepas is, and how ht~ is overruled by the opinions of those who sec him. Everyone knows th~\t !\ladame de l\laun~pa5, infinite1}' less witty than her husb~lnd, has much more eh~1.Tacter, and inspires him with aU her wishes. Public opinion likewise produces upon him an impression which is extraordinary in a sensible man, who, with his intdhgencl~, should have views of his own. I have seen him changc his opinion ten times. on the OC<::~lsjon of the bed of justice, according us he looked either at the keeper of the seals or ~t ~t Alhertt Heutt.~mmt of police, or at mysdf. It is thanks to that unfQrtunate uncertainty, of which the parliament was faithfully informed, that the rcsistance of the ass{;~mbly was so prolonged. If the Abbe de V(~ry had not contributcd to strengthen his friend, I should not be ~stonished to hear that he would have given up cl'ery"

thing, and advised your l\lajesty to give way to the par·· liament. That weakness it is which makes him adopt so e..'\sily the clamours of the courtiers against lUl'\ and which deprivesme of almostaU power in my ofllce. •...no not forget, Sire, that it is we~lkness which placed the head of Charles I on the block; it is weakTz.ergot. ness which rendered Charles IX cruel; it is weakness which organised the Ligllt under Henry IV; which made of Louis XIII,as it now makes of the king of Portugal, crowned slaves; it is weakness which caused all the misfortunes of the late reign. "People believe you are weak, Sire, and occasions have been when I feared lest you should have that defect; and yet, in other circumstances still more deli cate, I have seen you display real courage. "You have said it yourself, Sire, experience is wanting in you; you need a guide, and that guide should possess both mind and strength. M:. de Maurepas has the former of these qualities, and he cannot have the latter unless he himself is backed up. He does not feel so, he even dreads it ; I see as much by the selection he has in view, and by the little amount of effort he has made to determine you in fa"our of the Abbe de Very. I see that he dreads precisely that which would give him strength. lIe does not feel that after having isolated me, after having made your :Majesty dislike me, and compelled me to leave )'ou, the storm now directed against me will fall upon him, and that he will end by giving way, ~'\rrying along with him your authority, or, perhaps, after having ruined it .... Such, Sire, is your present position: a cabinet weak and disunited; aU the minds in a state of ferment; the parliaments leagued With all the cabals, emboldened by a patent weakness (your l\lajesty has seen in a letter which I have confided to you, the very 1tali,Jt expression of their thoughts), Turgot's Leiters. 177 an income below the expenditure, the greatest resistance to indispensable economy, no harmony, no stability in plans, no secre(~y in the resolutions of your councils; and it is in the midst of such circumst."mces that a man is proposed to your~lo.jesty, destitute of aU talent, and whose only merit is his subserviency'-lo whom? not to the one amongst your ministers who shows some strength in his office, but to the keeper of the seals, who by his insinuations further increases hlS disposition to weakness.

It is in these circumstances that your ~Iaj~sty cannot be struck by the dangers which I h:u!e pointed out to you with so much evidence. "Really, Sire, I fail to understand you; people may h::we said to you that I was hot~he.1dcd and chimerical; yet it seems to me that an I am telling you is not like the ravings of a madman. It seems even to me that the operations I have made, despite the clamours, the oppo .. sidon they have met with, have had the success I fore~ told; and if I nm no madman, if the dangers I have shown to you have any reality about them, )'our :\Iajest)' c~nnot, without failing in your own sense of duty, rush into them by condescension for 1\1. de ~lnurepas. U I beg of )'OU to reflect once again before you make up }'our mind to an appointment which will be bad in itself, and fntal by its consequences, Finally. if I am so unfortunate that this letter should bring upon me your ~lajcstyts disple~sllre, I entreat you to inform me that such is the casco An}'how, I rely upon your keepingtht~ matter secret."

Ttty/[ot. The king did not answer this letter, an)' more than the previous ones whieh Turgot had written to him on that day or at an earlier date. He had to choose between :Maurepas and Turgot, and his selection was made beforehand. He could not be influenced by the last effort which Turgot made in writing to him with so much bluntness. Far from that! He must even have seen there an effort to gain the mastery over his will, and to govern by placing him, the king, so to say, out of the government. 011 the 31st of April, the <In}' when he caused this fourth and final letter to be delivered to l.ouis XVI, no doubt hy ~t. d'Angivilliers~ Turgot wroteto Very, without alluding yet to the last effort he had just attempted, and bt~gg(~d of him to come to Paris for the purpose of influencing the mind of his old friend :\faurcpas, and inducing him to choose the successor of )Ialesherbes amongst the champions of reform. Ten days after~ wards, on the loth of ~Iay, he wrote to him that all was pvcr. and that the successor of .l\1alesherbes was really Amelot.

He, however, still hoped to have the time to draw up a plan for the reform of the kingJs household. " The plan will certainly not be adopted, and I shall ask to be set free. H The next day, ~lay II, 1776, a fresh letter: "The }Iarquis de NoailIes is ambassador in England, :M. de Ja Vaugu)'on in Iionand, 1\1. de Guines has the patent of Duke, and is therefore as white as snow."

Tl0:g0t'S lJislIlissal. 179 Finally, on the 12th of T\Ia}~, his (~(}l1cague Bt~rtjn delivered to him, on the part of the king, the order to give up his functions. 1\Iaurcpas wfote to him: it If I had been at liberty, sir, to follow my firj:)t impulse, I would have called ,upon you. Superior orders han~ pre't"ented me from doing so. I beg you to be persuaded of tne share I take in your situation.'l Turgot, answering him, began by the following words: "I receh,'c, sir, the letter you have honoured me "..-ith.; I do not doubt the sh:lre you have taken in the event of the d;,\y~ and I f(~d every proper gratitude on the subject.'" TWQ days after, ~r:l)' 14th, he wrott": to Very: "\' our old fri(~nd has caused me to be dismissed without waiting for me to ask (or my retr<::at.Y' On the 18th of l\lay, after having ()btained leave from the king, Turgot wrote to him a letter, which Dupont de Nemours has published" and which forms a worthy parallel to that by which he accepted, two years before, the office of amlriJ!tur ghlera/. lIe alludes in it to the four secret letters of which ,ve have spoken. (( The step which I have ttlken, and which s(~ems to have displeased }'OU, must have proved to you that no motive could aaach me to my offke! for it was impossible that I should not be aware of the risk I was running, and I should not hav(,~ exposed myself to it h~\d I preferred my for tune to my dut).. You have also seen in my letters how impossibleit was for me to be of any useful service in that place, and consequently to retain it, if you left me there isolated and without any help."

180 Turgot. \Vhen he speaks U oethe step which he has taken,'· some persons have thought that Turgot was alluding to his interference in the business of the Count de Guines; but there can now be no doubt on the subject. The step which has displeased is the correspondence. The four letters had deeply offended the king. Immediately after his disgrace, Turgot retired to the dla/eall of the Duchess d'EnvilJe at r~'1. Roche-Guyon; then he returned to Paris. He spent the five remaining years of his life in the study of sciences and the cultiva tion of literature. The universal reproach addressed to him of having lost his influence by the want of pliancy in his character,*· in one word, U by his awkwardness," affected him much; he spoke of it in the long letter which he wrote to Dr, Price, M:arch :und, 1778. ce lowe you a double shan~ of gratitude/, says he, " first, for your work ... ; 2nd, for the politeness you have shown in suppressing the imputation of tlwkward.

fUSS mixed by you with the good you said of me in your • "M y dear and illustrious philosopher, I have been com missioned to send you the enclosed copy of M, Turgotls famous decrees. You know them, and, consequentl)·, you esteem him. You have heard of his downfall, and you will pity us; for although he did not sufficiently know either society or business, although in maintaining his \'iews he had a stubbornness and a coldness little calculated to make them adopted, although he deemed it a great deal too easy to upset all estabHshed things, and to go against all received prejudices, so long as one is right, yet no one has regretted him." (Letter of Suard to H urne, May 28, 1776.) 4.il,prtCl:,tioltof 1il1i:,tfs Character. t 81 ;:uJditional observations. I might have desen-'ed the imputation, ifyou had not had in your mind's eye any other awkwardness except that of not having known how to unravel the intrigues set at work against me by people much morc clever in that Hne of conduct than I am, than I shall ever be, and than I wish to be. But it struck me that you ascribed to me the awkwardness of having ruddy gc:me against the general opinion of my nation, and in that respect I think that you had done justice neither to me nor to my nation, where there is much more enlightenment than is generally thought amongst you, and where it is perhaps easier than in your own country to bring bac.k the people to reasonable ideas."

The opinion expressed by Doctor Price was held then as a kind ofaxiom. Up to his death, and even afterwards, Turgot has been looked upon as having made shipwreck bec.ause he could not master himself, and because, on accounf of the asperities of his character, he could not win the kindness of those whose support he needed to get one Althoughthis judgment has been almost unanimously subscribed by Turgot's contemporaries, it ought to be revised by the generations born of the RC\'olulion, because the coadjutors and friends, as well as the adversaries and enemies of the great minister, have mixed up his personal and individual cause with that of his doctrines .; nor ha\o°c they noticed that the defects of character ascribed to him, and which have broughtabout his downfall,have been, fifteen years later, one of the principal reasons of the final triumph of his ideas.

182 Tttrgot. It is known now, in consequence of g(J'lJenzmellfs ()! Opinl()n having been practised for many years, that the upsetting of a cabinet on a question of principle leads often to this: a party is formed which adopts the programme of that cabinet, and the new party is strong enough to realise su hsequently, when circumstances have become more favourable, the reforms which had been endangered by the very downfall of the minister. Democracy, which has made the Revolution, certainly needed not to remem ber Turgot when it destroyed privileges, and placed its equalising level on :French society; but we must acknowledge that it has been influenced in the highest degree by the remembrance of Turgot in all economic a~d financial questions, especially on the day when it consecrated the principle of unfettered work-principle which was contrary to the aspirations of some ofitsleaders,who thought that it could be neglected consistently with the passion for equality.

After leaving public life Turgot devoted himself almost entirely, first, to the Atademie des inscriptions et belles*letlres,over which he presided as vice-director in 1777, and then to the literary studies which had charmed him in his youth. He had many friends, and he was fond of seein~ them, although they were "the thieves of his time," as he said, after Bacon. He eagerly procured all the scientific works which were published throughout Europe. He studied the higher branches of geometry with the Abbe Bossut, chemistry with Lavoisier, astronomy Tur..i[ols ()ccujJatiolls. 183 with Rochon. Condorcet kept him a/l (Quratll of aU that was going on at the A(ad;mit~ des scitlues. "'hen Franklin came to Paris. at the end of J 716, he saw him frequently.; he talked with him about the con~ stitution of the various Amcricnn States. lIe even wrote on purpose fbr him a memoir on the taxesaffecting :lrtic1es of consumption. lIe also sent one day to Sartine, anonymously, a note on Capt.lin Cook's third voyage of discovery, proposing that his ship should be assimilated to those of neutral powers. U Captnin Cook," said he, .. is probablyon his way back to Europe.

The purposeof his voyage being merely the progressC?f human knowledge, nnd thereforeinteresting all nations, it is worthy of the king's magnanimity that its success should not be allowed to stand compromised by the for· tunes of war." Sartine caused thIS note to be approved by the king, but neither the king nor Sartine ever kne\~ that the ~enerous idea with which they associated them~ selves c~me from the disgraced minister. During the first period of his retreat Turgot suffered very impatiently that the beautiful reforms he had under taken should be reconsidered. Hearing that there was a talk about suppressing his edicts on the abolition of juramJes and (()n'tes, he wished to write to 1\h.urepas. He even began a letter, but never finished it. Could he hope that they would listen once more to him who had been dismissedfrom powerin ordernot to be continuaUy wearied by his pleadings on behalf of rcfonlls? The unfinished letter has been found amongst his papers; it is at Lantheuil.

T1/1:~Ot. "In spite of all that I had heard, sir, since my removal (rom the ministry, relating to the plan ascribed to you, of advising the king to reconsider the suppression of the ~()rt.!ftS ~lnd jllralldts, I never could persuade myN self that you were bent on realising it. I cannot under~ stand your having had ever the idea of doing so; but it is impossible to doubt now that you have already c()n suIted the parliament as to the new decrees intended to cancel those which were passed in the last bed of justice. It will certainly seem strange to you that I should venture to writ~ to you on this occasion. It is (not) from me that you expect advice, and I cannot presume that my opinion may make you alter your views; the very reflexions I have to submit to you are so simple, so palpably evident, that it seems morally impossible that they should not have suggested themselves to you; but the more natural and palpable they are, the more in agreement with the line of thought I always knew you to have, the more also I am obliged to believe that some extraordinary motive has closed your eyes to their evidence. I wish then to recall yourself to what you have a thousand times said and thought, to what you owe to the public, to the king, to your own reputation; I want to oppose your conscience to passion, which, allow me to say so, conceals from you even your own intereCit.

Forgive me this frankness, sir; my intention is not to offend you by unpalatable truths; but you know me weB enough to understand that I cannot see without the deepest sorrow a great good destroyed to which I had Death oj Tttrgot. I8S had the happiness of contributing, a good supported by the will of the king against the obstacles put in its way, a good which I was bound to suppose solidly established. I (eel this interest, o( course j I dare also to feel con cerned (or the honour of the king, which may be com promised by so sudden a change-the king who ought to be dear to me, both as a citizen, and as having shared his confidence and his kindness." There the letter ended, and it has never been fimshed. Turgot had the grief of seeing the suppression of his decrees. If he had hved ten years more he would have had the joy of seeing them once and (or ever reinstated in the code or our laws; but his health was precarious, and his attacks of gout frequently recurred. He had only a few more months to live. Poetry occupied his last days. He had finished his translation of the 4th iEneid In metricalverses. He translated in rhymed verses some Odes of Horace. Dupont de Nemours tells us that Turgot dictated to him, during his last illness, the trans lation of the ode .tEguQm mtlJlt1l/o.

CC Un marne torrent nous entratne ; Un marne gouffre nous attend Nos noms jett!s confus~rnent S'agitent dans rume incertaine. T6t ou tard Ie sort les am~ne Et designe ~ chacun son tour, Pour passer l'onde souterraine Dont Ie voyage est sans retour." Turgot died in Paris, Alarch 18, 1781, with the firln N 186 Ttergot. ness of soul of a man of whom ~o[alesherbes could say that he had the heart of J..,'Hopital nnd the mind of Bacon. He was buried at first in the church of the Incurables, Rue de Sevres, so says ~L de Neymarck; but his coffin was transferred afterwards to the cemetery of Bons, in Normandy. A tradition preserved in the family tells 'us that in 1793, at the time when all the available lead was required by the government, his coffin was removed from the tomb, and opened in order to extract the metal. Several of the persons entrusted with that operation had known Turgot. They were frightened at seeing him in a perfect state of preservation,and at lookingat his features, which appeared as if he was }'ct alive to reproach them for disturbing his repose. At that view they ran away, leaving the work unfinished. The municipal ofticers had the coffin hastily put into a grave, but the spot was not marked. AU that we know at the present day is that Turgot's remains are buried to an unknown corner of that little country churchyard.